This substantial collection of twenty-three essays is in honour of P.T. O’Brien, Vice-Principal of Moore Theological College, Sydney. It also contains an appreciation of his life and work by a colleague.

The editors have organised the essays into four loose groupings. These concern theological perspectives on Paul’s mission, various aspects of the mission itself, the context of Paul’s mission in the Graeco-Roman world, and the implications of Paul’s theology and mission for subsequent Christian thought and mission. The contributors often assume affirmative answers to the questions of Paul’s authorship of the Pastorals and the historical reliability of Acts.

Such a collection is inevitably diverse, but there are themes around which groups of essays cluster. Those by Graeme Goldsworthy, William Dumbrell and Andrew Shead all present Salvation History as a vital element in any theological assessment of Paul’s mission. Paul’s reflections on suffering feature strongly in the essays by Ralph Martin and Scott Hafemann; the relationship between his thought and that of Graeco-Roman philosophy in those by Richard Gibson and Peter Bolt. Some contributors seem disturbed by Paul’s perceived failure to do things that, judged from an evangelical perspective, he ought to have done. David Wenham and David Seccombe both argue that, despite our lack of evidence on the matter, Paul must have used stories of Jesus’ teaching in his preaching of the gospel. Don Carson turns this genre to better account when he moves from a consideration of Paul’s apparent failure to pray for the lost to a questioning of our own pattern of prayer.

As always in such a collection the quality of the contributions varies, but there are some fine essays. Paul Barnett reviews the questions of whether Judaism was a missionary religion and I. Howard Marshall surveys Luke’s portrait of Paul’s mission. Neither of these essays breaks new ground, but they provide excellent introductions to their subjects. Michael Hill provides some interesting observations on theology and ethics in Romans, and the previously mentioned essays by Ralph Martin and Scott Hafemann are argued carefully.

Perhaps the best essays in the book are the very different contributions from Mark Thompson and Edwin Judge. Thompson calls for a more central role to be given to the Bible in contemporary systematic theology. He points out that, for all the other differences between our context and his, we are, eschatologically speaking, in the same missionary context as Paul. His letters are therefore of far more direct relevance to the situation of contemporary Christians than is sometimes imagined by theologians. Thompson provides less justification for his move from this conclusion to the assertion that revelation is essentially propositional, but his final seven-point agenda for theological study contains much that both evangelicals and many others will find thought-provoking.

Judge considers the impact of Paul’s gospel on ancient society. This essay is a joy because he is not afraid to challenge several scholarly common places. Against the view that the gospel did little to produce social change Judge argues that Paul’s theme of the inner man (Paul took an unparalleled interest in searching his own heart) found later expression in early monasticism. Similarly, his theme of the one new man (Paul’s insistence that Jews and Gentiles form a single social unity) found later expression in Christian attitudes towards martyrdom. The fashion in which they did so would sometimes have surprised Paul, but Judge argues that the links can be traced. The social impact of the gospel may not be found in those areas where our contemporary values might lead us to expect it, but that does not mean that there was none.

Most of the more stimulating essays happen to be concentrated in the second half of the book. Those readers who fear that they will not manage to read all the essays may be well advised to begin at the back!

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